So I'm hearing about all these evolutionary "theories" & "probabilities" yet they aren't proven but taught as FACT! So that is a flat out lie!!
Biological evolution occurs. It has been observed, making its existence a fact, therefore, it should be taught as a fact.
Once the mechanisms of biological evolution are understood, one realizes that the process cannot be stopped. Gene pools are inherently dynamic, spontaneously changing over time. We see the same phenomenon in linguistics, where over time, nested hierarchies of dialects, languages, and families of languages result from the passage of time applied to a handful of proto-languages combined with the inexorable and unstoppable tendency for language to change over time (ask the French how difficult it is to prevent the evolution of language).
The same is true with the nested hierarchy of denominations and families of religions. Over time, and given the inherent tendency for religious beliefs and religious congregations to splinter, we expect the tree of religions past and present to evolve in the same was as populations of biological organisms and languages do.
Regarding proof, you've probably already been told that proof of a scientific theory is neither possible nor necessary. Empirical adequacy, or the ability of an idea to be useful for predicting the outcomes of various events and processes, is sufficient.
The theory of evolution is a system of ideas that unifies mountains of data from a multitude of sources, accurately makes predictions about what can and cannot be found in nature, provides a rational mechanism for evolution consistent with the known actions of nature, accounts for both the commonality of all life as well as biodiversity, and has had practical applications that have improved the human condition in areas like medicine and agriculture.
Those are the credentials of correct ideas. Creationism can do none of that, and has been sterile to date, offering no ideas that can be used in any legitimate way - the credentials of an incorrect idea.
We cannot prove that the theory is correct if it is, but as I indicated, we don't need to. We're going to keep the theory and continue using it because it works. Why on earth would we throw out an idea that works so well for one that doesn't work at all? Because certain people with religious beliefs object to it for contradicting their faith-based teaching?
Then they won't allow any problems with the theory, even from Darwin's own book to be discussed. That's CENSORSHIP due to Agenda not science.
What you call the problems with evolutionary theory are not a threat to it. They are not problems challenging the fundamental tenets of the theory and threatening to overturn it. They are the problems that science tackles routinely in the daily pursuit of better understanding of how the world works. The theory of evolution may be tweaked a bit in the future, but it will not be upended any more than the heliocentric theory of the solar system will be. The evidence is simply too robust
A little thought will explain why. Those mountains of evidence would not go away if a theory-falsifying find was uncovered. They would still need to be explained in the light of the falsifying find. The implication would be that a great deception had occurred, wherein some super-powerful entity went to great trouble to make it appear that life had evolved here on earth when it hadn't. What else is even possible if evolution is wrong, and that seems orders of magnitude less likely than that the theory is correct, meaning that the chances of the theory being falsified are vanishingly small.
please explain how evolution explains w/o FAITH & Supernatural a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
Evolution doesn't explain how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. It simply says that at each stage along its multi-billion year history tracing back from the last common ancestor of all life on earth up to the present, like all other currently living populations, butterfly ancestors experienced the effects of natural selection operating on diverse populations experiencing genetic variation over generations, each of which made that ancestral form more competitive securing scarce resources than its littermates.
If we want to know what those changes were, what order they appeared, what their timeline was, and why those changes conferred a competitive advantage, we have to go outside the theory of evolution to the field of entomology.
Human evolutionists have an analogous problem that evolutionary theory also can't help with. We acquired a host of new features following the branching of the chimp's line and man's and our descent from the trees. We stood upright, lost most of our body hair, changed from herbivores to omnivores (changes in dentition and jaw musculature) and became hunters, developed big brains and the female pelvis capable of delivering one, learned to make and use tools, harnessed fire, developed language, became navigators, made permanent settlements, etc.. What was the order of these changes, and what drove them? Darwin's theory cannot give us the answer.
Incidentally, we now know that upright posture preceded increased cranial capacity from the fossils of ancestral forms like Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, who was bipedal (her spinal cord came out of the bottom of the skull rather than through a more posterior aspect as is the case with animals whose spines are more parallel to the ground than ours when ambulating), but had a chimp-like skull size.
But that is the province of paleontology, physical anthropology, and related endeavors - not Darwin's theory.
I've read so much in textbooks. They use so many words like could, might, over time so on & so forth w/o any specifics with actual evolutionary steps.
Science uses accurate language. If something can only be said to possibly true because it cannot be ruled in or out at this time, the only accurate comment is that it may or might not be the case. If that disappoints you - if you feel compelled to move from the agnostic's middle ground to one answer or the other - then you don't have the temperament for science, which requires the ability to resist premature judgments and make guesses that might be incorrect. It's not a weakness of science to be uncommitted before a decision can be made. It's a virtue.
I know you won't read anything to upset your bias. But in Dr Jonathan Wells book "Icons of Evolution"
I'm with the others who have voiced an opinion that he is simply no longer interested in what creationists have to say except in the narrow sense of being interested in how they think, not what they believe.
Intelligent design has been utterly discredited. It has been declared pseudoscience by American courts, banned from the classroom in American (and other) public schools, has been revealed to be a deception intended to repackage creationism as something not religious or unscientific, had several of its most prominent representatives publicly disgraced (Behe, Dembski, Sternberg), and has made multiple claims of irreducible complexity that have been debunked, all the while generating nothing that suggests that our universe had or needed an intelligent designer.
Remember what I wrote about the features of an incorrect idea - it can't be used for anything, it explains nothing, it accurately predicts nothing, it has little or no supporting evidence - like astrology? Creationism has the same track record, and like astrology, can and should be ignored.
Regarding bias, holding rational biases is not only desirable, it's essential for learning and for living safely and happily. Life is a series of discoveries of which choices produce which results, and which results we prefer. That's bias, too. For example, if I have tried two different restaurants and found that I liked one much better than the other, I will develop a rational bias for one restaurant and against the other.
It's only irrational bias such as bigotry that are undesirable, since it leads to wrong ideas about reality or the unkind and unfair treatment of others. Superstitions fit in that category as well - irrational and incorrect biases about how reality works.
The bias against creationists, their beliefs, and their methods is a rational conclusion based on prior experience, one which allows me to choose to disregard creationists knowing that I won't be making a mistake if I do. As I said, that's bias, but it's also rational, it's also learning, and unlike irrational bias, useful for navigating life calmly and peacefully.